Posted on 06/16/2025 10:11:58 AM PDT by Racketeer
How did we arrive at a point in this country where 25% of all tax revenue goes to just paying the interest in $37 trillion in govt debt?
Annually: US govt total reveneue = about $5 trillion ...
Control is what they feed off of.
Its a virtuous cycle for those in power. Not so much for those who will have to pay for it.
Enact the Warren Buffet proposal - if the national debt exceeds 3% of GDP, not congresspeople and senators are automatically barred from re-election. It is a multi legged problem: Unchecked debt will cause an unsustainable level of interest - crashing the economy. Dramatic cuts government program will crash the economy. Raising taxes enough to affect the dept will crash the economy. The answer is to freeze spending at current levels and let the economy (and hence tax revenue) grow over the next five years.
“The answer is to freeze spending at current levels...”
************
No chance of that because buying votes requires ever increasing outlays. /sarc
No chance of that ever passing, because the cuts would be so extreme, they would be voted out anyway. We are in a death spiral - no one will have the political will to make the cuts.
The collapse is happening slowly at first, then all of a sudden! To paraphrase a common saying.
We’ve known about this coming for decades. I know I’ve yacked about often as have many others.
A ticking time bomb highly dependent on interest rates and inflation levels.
If it is a choice between the children being forced to labor as debt slaves (including those yet unborn), who are 100% innocent of the debt, and the people who have willingly bought government debt (like a bartender plying the town drunk), I say stiff the people who knew perfectly well what they were doing when they decided to keep funding a profligate and out of control government.
actually, long term its a good thing...without access to cheap money government will have to stop doing stuff. Dad’s cutting off princess’s credit card...
Interesting idea but would require a Constitutional Amendment. A possible Convention of States Amendment.
I’ve thought along that line too.
Ok,though experiment: say we do it what are the consequences both national (internal) & international?
It’s the dems and the GOPe working together the last couple a decades, or “uniparty” for short. This is not complicated.
1. No one is willing to purchase federal debt for a long while (I consider this a feature not a bug). In fact, I suspect other countries would face higher borrowing costs as well, which forces the day of reckoning on them as well.
2. Politicians are no longer able to buy votes and pay off supporters by robbing from future generations. That forces much great accountability and tougher political battles for spending bills, which is a good thing.
3. Holders of government debt are screwed. TBH, that’s going to happen one way or another because hyperinflation gives the same effective result. So the people who are horrified by my idea should consider that rejecting it doesn’t change as much as they think it does.
4. Entitlement programs become much more of a battleground (similar to #2), as maintaining unrealistic levels of redistribution requires taking from productive workers, not from children who have no political voice. And this means seniors, those on welfare and so on suddenly have a much great interest in seeing America healthy and productive (such that they can share in the resulting wealth) rather than play a zero-sum game of taking from others without regard to the impact on those others.
“No chance of that because buying votes requires ever increasing outlays.“
That’s not sarcasm. Over half the population receives more money from FedGov than they put in.
Any congressman who votes for cuts will be replaced by someone who will increase spending.
The nation can just default and pass a law allowing it to go into bankruptcy.
It is just a bunch of numbers on a balance sheet.
People will lose Medicare & medicaid, but medical care should not be the governments concern.
Been saying it for years. How would they be able to collect their debt? The debt owner says, “Give me my money”!!
The US Military says, “Hello. You can try if you want but it might not be good for your health.”
"Patriots-A Novel of the Coming Collapse" By James Wesley Rawles.
It's scary. And it's coming.
God help us.
Would that’s include freezing increases to the sacred monthly check?
Would you default on the debt owed to the sacred monthly check trust fund?
Politicians: “We party on and be re-elected...as long as we can.” /s
That was a great book and yes, I became a prepper after reading it. Anyone in a metropolitan area will be in a war zone. The problem will be debating fight or flee. Since retiring, it will be difficult to flee as a senior citizen.
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